


His Feet are shod with Gauze

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Conversations, Domestic, F/M, Marriage, Religious Content, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 15:20:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10516404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: They had a hired girl who did the heavy work.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Lady's Fancy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10512342) by [RedFlagsAndDiamonds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedFlagsAndDiamonds/pseuds/RedFlagsAndDiamonds). 



Henry’s income was not very much, certainly not what Emma was used to as the daughter of a wealthy businessman, but poverty was not the reason she undertook to polish and oil his boots every night and did not let their girl Betsey manage it. Perhaps Betsey could have done it better, as she seemed to do most of the chores more efficiently and competently than Emma, but Emma did not want to admit it and she did not want Betsey to touch Henry’s boots. She thought the girl liked her well enough, for paying her wages promptly and not presuming to ask where she went when she wasn’t at the Hopkins’s small house, but whatever was between them was delicate and could not have borne the scrutiny that would have come with Henry’s boots. Emma knew Betsey would simply see another menial task, one that was not unduly taxing, and it was not so for her. Not at all.

Henry worked on his sermons in the cramped front parlor while she tended his boots. She had a small basket now with her tools, the soft cloth and the flask of oil, the tin of boot-black and the worn gloves she used to protect her hands from the stain, the stiff brush and the chalk the cobbler had given her the last time she called. She had evolved a method, likely not the one Betsey would have used or Belinda or anyone with any real experience, but it had become one of the great pleasures of her day. She loved the sound of the brush against the leather and the scent of the polish, the way the oil glided along the shaft, the edge of the scallop, the sensation of her hands within the cotton gloves and way the shape of the toe rose up into her palm. The first time she’d polished his boots, she had blushed the whole time with the memory of their coupling, how the dark leather had looked against his shins, how she had glimpsed the contrast between her pale, rounded calf and the sleek boot, the thud of the heels on the floorboards as she had cried out in pleasure and Henry urged her on.

Now, there were so many nights to recall that she could not flush red at any one of them. The chore was no longer that, had become an act of contemplative prayer, of communion with aspects of herself and Henry that were still very difficult to articulate, even if she called upon Mary and found her alone in her library, surrounded by books in languages Emma would never master, conversant in the language of the flesh in ways Emma suspected she herself might never master. Emma had always loved to read and to debate, as much as it was allowed, but she found her greatest satisfaction in action and it was so within her marriage. Henry had asked one night, whether she was taking on too much, had suggested she needn’t work so hard on preparing his uniform, “including the boots. I don’t want you tiring yourself over something inconsequential.” They had been lying in their bed after a night of quiet affection, all she had expected to find in married life and even more gratifying for not being the only expression of their love.

“I’m not and it isn’t inconsequential,” she’d said.

“No?” He had a different tone for the night, he could sound tired and content. She liked that she alone knew it.

“The nuns tell their rosaries and you wouldn’t say it is only counting beads,” she’d replied.

“Why, Emma! That’s edging close to blasphemy, to compare blacking my boots with their devout prayer. Even if we aren’t Papists,” he’d said. He hadn’t quite been scolding her but she heard the approach of it.

“You misunderstand me. It is not a chore to me, it is a devotion I make to our marriage, it is how I care for you when you must be Chaplain Hopkins, when I know if you go out into the field, you may be mistaken for an officer, may be shot at for tending to a man’s soul. It allows me to remember what is between us, how we are with each other alone,” she’d explained, still, after several months of being Mrs. Henry Hopkins, blushing to speak her thoughts aloud. “How you love me…even when I am wicked, when I sin.”

Then, he had startled her as she supposed she had, that first night when she had murmured _Leave them on, Henry_ , startled him. He had interrupted her, saying, “I love you for your wickedness. And your goodness, for your sin and your virtue, for everything that is Emma. And I love you for blacking my boots and I love you most of all for asking me to leave them on.”

**Author's Note:**

> Another sequel to "A Lady's Fancy." I admit I did not do extensive research in to mid 19th century boot-blacking, so I beg forgiveness there for any inaccuracy. The title is from Emily Dickinson. Emma cannot understand Mary's books because this is math!Mary, presumably reading Euler or LaGrange or one of my favorite mathematician references.


End file.
